Grit Lab Report

Hi Ambika,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were achievement, benevolence, and power.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was extraversion.

You said your top three talents were social, analytic, and verbal.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to drink more water .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said get an a on my psyc exam on tuesday .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said i will feel relieved .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said poor time management and laziness .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: when I have my break between classes, I will do 20 .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in sports .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt embarrassed when receiving critical feedback, and embarrassed when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being job .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel happy .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

metaphors have psychological power— thinking of success as a journey is more helpful for when a goal is attained, success as a destination is better for a goal not attained
interest is an emotion, just as boredom is, and interest and enjoyment are different. also, high curiosity is linked to the reward centers of the brain
therapy can change your personality
learning rate is not significantly different for different people, start with gratitude and a time check at the start of a curiosity convo
proximal goals are much more successful and effective than distal goals
flow is usually achieved in performance, deliberate practice takes effort, innate talent is not as important as deliberate practice
praise publicly, criticize privately
near misses narrowly outperformed narrow wins
thinking about an experience from a third person perspective helps with emotion regulation
as a leader it's important to communicate feedback and preface the feedback with "i have high expectations and that's why"
empathy is key to effective teamwork

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Maeve Gonter
Teehee! Hi Friend! Well holy cow was it fun to sit next to you this semester. I so so appreciate your dry humor and your ability to keep me engaged in each class. Debriefs with you are the most fun. Thank you for always being on the same wavelength as me and keeping me laughing during all the breaks. Staying focused on Dr. Duckworth in class is far more enjoyable when you’re around. I’m so glad you stuck with the class, even if at the time it was for the habit journal (we all know how that turned out) because it was so fun to be in a group with you. Thanks for never taking things to seriously and knowing when to focus but also how to make the more boring moments or questions more engaging. First of all, way to kick off the presentations. No hesitation, all gas, no breaks, you got up there and absolutely killed it. I will say your project was so incredibly sweet. Building on what your grandma had made for you previously and incorporating so many members of your family to finish your discovery project. I really thought it was unbelievably sweet the knitting you did with your grandmother and cannot wait to see the finished scarf or sweater. We really shared very similar motivations behind our projects (that senior year nostalgia really gets to you) and I appreciated you being open to sharing yours because it made it easier to share mine. Cheers to knitting, can’t wait to see the gloves (with fingers).
Jai Smith
Despite Ambika's initial reservations about Grit Lab, I am grateful that she persevered through the course. This allowed not only me but also other group members to truly understand and appreciate her. Ambika consistently presented herself with her authenticity, particularly during our team discussions. Infusing our conversations with her natural sense of humor, she emerged as an individual who is unapologetically genuine. Her openness, outspoken nature, and honesty were evident in every interaction. Ambika actively listened to others, demonstrating a genuine willingness to hear different perspectives. During our team discussions, she consistently offered valuable advice, sharing her wisdom with everyone. My team and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to know and collaborate with Ambika. She effortlessly wove humor into our conversations. I am confident that, upon graduation, Ambika will continue to leave a mark by staying true to herself and positively influencing the lives she engages with. I enjoyed listening to Ambika's personal motivation for undertaking her discovery project. What stood out to me was her insightful reflection on how the project helped her understand her learning preferences. In particular, Ambika identified herself as a visual/experiential learner, a trait I share. Ambika's approach to her project was both intrapersonal and interpersonal. She drew inspiration from her grandmother, which added a meaningful layer to her pursuit of knitting. Her intrinsic motivation to continue the project was evident. I appreciated her thoughtful incorporation of her onset score, highlighting her strengths as a creative and artistic individual. This demonstrated her keen self-awareness and ability to leverage her strengths.One aspect that I found particularly impressive was Ambika's use of the project as a bonding experience for her family. It was fascinating to see how she not only pursued her interest but also shared it with her loved ones, turning it into a shared experience for everyone involved.
Jackson Lopiano
Ambika always brings a refreshing perspective and laid back demenor to group discussions. Throughout the semester, I have appreciated Ambika’s sarcasm and her insights to group conversations. In the beginning, I remember each day she would question whether or not to stay in the class. However, each week, she would continue returning and I am glad that she did. From getting her McClelland sushi during class breaks or seeing her give tours around campus, I have enjoyed all of my interactions with her and I’m lucky to have gotten to know her. For her Discovery Project, Ambika decided to take up knitting. I appreciated in her Discovery Project that she decided to take on a more creative skill to build on which was different than her career interests. I also appreciated that it was an activity that connected her more to her family, particularly her grandma. It was cool to see how she took this interest of hers back home into Thanksgiving break and got her family members involved. I would say the thing that I learned from her Discovery Project is that involving other members of your family and having a driving reason/connection to the passion you are pursuing (like the connection to her grandmother in this case) is what really motivated her to pursue it and now continue pursuing knitting in the future. I will take this lesson with me as I move forward from origami to explore other things that may interest me.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.